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Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Pipeline Safety Advisory Committees Teleconference – 12-17-13

The Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration
(PHMSA) published a meeting notice in today’ Federal Register (78 FR
70623-70624) for a teleconference of a joint meeting of the Gas Pipeline
Advisory Committee (GPAC) and the Liquid Pipeline Advisory Committee (LPAC) (Shared
Web Site) on December 17th, 2013.

The joint meeting will consider a proposed rule to
incorporate by reference two new standards and 21 updated editions of currently
referenced standards in 49 CFR Parts 192, 193, and 195. This is apparently
the “Periodic Updates of Regulatory References to Technical Standards and
Miscellaneous Amendments” NPRM that according to the Spring
2013 Regulatory Agenda is supposed to be published in December. Obviously,
that date won’t be met as this meeting is part of the regulatory review process
at PHMSA before that NPRM would be published. I suspect that the earliest this
will go to the Office of Management and Budget for their final review will be
sometime in January.

One of the topics that should come up in this discussion
will be how these updates will be made while complying with the congressional
mandate {§24 of the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act
of 2011 (PL 112-90)} to reduce reliance on such incorporation by
reference documents. That requirement prohibited PHMSA from using such
documents unless they were available without charge to the regulated community.
There are on-going discussions in
PHMSA about this issue and Congress modified
the requirements earlier this year (PL
113-30).

The public is invited to follow the teleconference (there is
no mention in the notice of allowing public comments during the discussion)
either via telephone or in person (in Washington, DC). The teleconference
number will be made available on the PHMSA web site at some future date (though
the PHMSA web site is circuitous at best). There is a link to the meeting
page where you are supposed to be able to register for the in-person
option, but as of 05:30 CST this morning there is no sign-up information on
that site.

Public comments are being solicited but there is some
confusion about where to send the comments. There are two different docket
numbers referenced in the notice for use on the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov). The first docket number PHMSA-2009-020
is the generic docket number for the meetings of these two advisory committees.
Since it contains a copy of today’s FR notice it is probably the proper place
to post comments. The second
docket number reference (PHMSA-2013-2003) is almost certainly a bad
misprint as there have not been 2002 PHMSA docket entries this year.

About Me

I spent 15 years in the US Army as an Infantry NCO. After getting out of the Army I started working in the chemical industry, getting my BSc Chemistry degree while working as a technician. I spent 12 years working as a process chemist in a specialty chemical company. Most recently I worked as a QA/R&D Manager in a specialty chemical manufacturing facility. Currently I am working as a freelance writer.